The Greenest Building in the South Bronx

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A sketch showing Bronx River House in relation to its site, including the river and road access.CreditCreditKiss + Cathcart

By Helene Stapinski

July 8, 2016

Near the elevated 6 train, past graffitied buildings and auto body shops, just off the trash-strewn Sheridan Expressway, a narrow, hidden river flows. And on its banks the greenest and most cutting-edge building in the South Bronx is rising.

After a decade of planning and $13 million in construction costs, the Bronx River House is nearly complete. A base for the Bronx River Alliance’s 20-member staff, the house, a parks department building, will also be used to store canoes and kayaks, serve as a laboratory for studying the environment and provide a place for school groups and the community to meet.

“I always hear stories of people in the Bronx having no idea there was even a river here,” said Greg Kiss, the building’s architect.

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A rendering of the Bronx River House.CreditKiss + Cathcart/Starr Whitehouse

And for the few who did know about the river, said Linda Cox, executive director of the alliance, “their parents had always warned them, ‘Don’t go near it.’”

For years, the alliance has shared office space with the Parks Department on the Bronx River Parkway. But now it has a riverfront home in Starlight Park near 174th Street.

“This is the place where we can come together and continue to reclaim the river,” said Ms. Cox. With access to the water, the alliance will be able to introduce more of the Bronx’s 1.4 million residents to the 23-mile-long freshwater river.

“At some spots, you don’t even know you’re in the city anymore,” Ms. Cox said. The river is also now home to 35 species of fish, river eels, herons, egrets, the occasional osprey and, for the first time in 200 years, two beavers. Their names: Jose, named after Representative José E. Serrano of the Bronx, and Justin, after a certain pop singer. (Justin Beaver — get it?)

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New plantings and a walkway have been fashioned beside the new building.CreditFred R. Conrad for The New York Times

Though the autoclaved aerated concrete walls have already been built, work is still underway at the 7,000-square-foot site: A large pile of construction debris and soil rises high beside Dumpsters, trailers and busy front-end loaders.

Mr. Kiss, whose firm won the Public Design Commission Award in 2008 for its building plans, said that after a series of financing, management and permit delays, the River House should be finished by October and fully operational by November.

Once it is completed, a geothermal system will help heat and cool the parks department building, he explained. Solar panels will cover the saw-toothed roof, providing 60 percent of the building’s energy. Windows between the panels will provide light, making it unnecessary to turn on a light switch during the day. A screen wall with mesh wraps will host vines that will throw shade in summer and help modulate the building’s temperature.

A 10,000-gallon tank was recently buried at the site to collect rainwater, which will be used to feed the plants, flush the toilets and wash the two dozen boats kept on site. “Why waste the city’s water?” said Mr. Kiss.

An article in some editions on July 10 about the Bronx River House, an ecologically sensitive building, gave an incorrect figure from city officials for the size of the building’s rainwater storage tank. It is 10,000 gallons, not 190,000.

THE PARTICULARS

Project Bronx River House

Site On the river at Starlight Park, near 174th Street in the South Bronx

Driving Force Linda Cox and the Bronx River Alliance, the Parks Department, the Department of Design and Construction and Greg Kiss, the architect

In the Works Since 2006

Biggest Obstacle Layers of city and state bureaucracy

Cost $13 million.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page MB5 of the New York edition with the headline: The Greenest Building in the South Bronx. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe